10 Doctor Who Mistakes Confirmed By The Creators
2. The Plasmaton Problem
There’s nothing worse than an unconvincing monster, and the Plasmatons rank as one of the most unconvincing of all.
They were envisaged as powerful, amorphous henchmen, and the whole point of the costume was to hide the human shape... but they were blatantly just men in suits. No thought was given to the actors’ eyelines either, so they couldn’t move independently – save for the odd bit of lumbering.
As the big bads of the Fifth Doctor’s first finale, they failed spectacularly – a fact the man himself is under no illusion about.
“They were just nothing at all,” Peter Davison recalled. “It was just one more indignity that was heaped upon the story. It was a real symbol that [the BBC had] run out of money. 'What can we do for these Plasmatons? Let's just make them lumps of polystyrene!’”
It’s a trend that continued in the Fifth Doctor’s other finales, with the execution of Kamelion and the Magma Beast also leaving a lot to be desired.
However, The Caves of Androzani featured one of the show’s most enduring villains in the form of Sharaz Jek. Every cloud...